


Much the Same Smile

by secretsalex



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Creepy, Cross-Generation Relationship, Dark Draco Malfoy, F/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:10:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/secretsalex/pseuds/secretsalex
Summary: Auror Rose Weasley is called in to investigate the murder of Astoria Malfoy and finds herself inexplicably attracted to a dark and sinister Draco Malfoy.





	Much the Same Smile

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the wonderful [hp_darkfest](http://hp-darkfest.livejournal.com/52136.html) back in 2011. Although the prompt (listed verbatim as the above summary) is what started this fic, it really comes out of Robert Browning’s poem, “The Last Duchess.” A great deal of the plot, as well as the title, is cribbed in direct or indirect fashion from Browning (which is included in full below).

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,  
Looking as if she were alive. I call  
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands  
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.  
Will't please you sit and look at her? I said  
"Fra Pandolf" by design, for never read  
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,  
That depth and passion of its earnest glance,  
But to myself they turned (since none puts by  
The curtain drawn for you, but I)  
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,  
How such a glance came there; so not the first  
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 't was not  
Her husband's presence only, called that spot  
Of joy into the Duchess' cheek: perhaps  
Fra Pandolf chanced to say "Her mantle laps  
Over my lady's wrist too much" or "Paint  
Must never hope to reproduce the faint  
Half-flush that dies along her throat:" such stuff  
Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough  
For calling up that spot of joy. She had  
A heart - how shall I say? - too soon made glad,  
Too easily impressed: she liked whate'er  
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.  
Sir, 't was all one! My favour at her breast,  
The dropping of the daylight in the West,  
The bough of cherries some officious fool  
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule  
She rode with round the terrace -all and each  
Would draw from her alike the approving speech,  
Or blush,at least. She thanked men - good! but thanked  
Somehow - I know not how - as if she ranked  
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name  
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame  
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill  
In speech - (which I have not) - to make your will  
Quite clear to such a one, and say, "Just this  
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss  
Or there exceed the mark"- and if she let  
Herself be lessened so, nor plainly set  
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse  
\- E'en then would be some stooping; and I choose  
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,  
Whene'er I passed her; but who passed without  
Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands;  
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands  
As if alive. Will 't please you rise? We'll meet  
The company below, then. I repeat,  
The Count your master's known munificence  
Is ample warrant that no just pretence  
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;  
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed  
At starting is my object. Nay, we'll go  
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though,  
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,  
Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me.

_—Robert Browning, “My Last Duchess”_

It’s the third time this week Rose has been at Malfoy Manor. 

“Would you like to see her portrait? The last Mrs. Malfoy?” The question frightens her, and she doesn’t know why. 

“Er—yes, Mr. Malfoy, I suppose.”

“She was quite beautiful, you know, my Astoria.”

Rose nods, following Draco as he strides across the parlour to pull back a curtain and reveal a large portrait hanging on the wall. “Yes, I know, sir. Everyone did—she was a wonderful woman.”

Draco’s lip curls slightly. “Yes, everyone knew, didn’t they?” He places a light hand on Rose’s arm. “She was twenty four when I commissioned this painting.” He smiles, then looks down at Rose, who barely reaches his shoulder. “She was about your age—perhaps a bit older, I suppose.”

“Ah—well—I’m twenty-two, sir,” Rose says, feeling as if Draco’s hand on her arm will burn a hole through her sleeve. 

Draco smiles again and Rose shudders, something deep inside her pulling taut. “Of course, you were in Scorpius’ year, weren’t you? Twenty-two, and already an Auror. Impressive, Rose. May I call you Rose?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Rose is usually quite firm about insisting that people call her Auror Weasley—being young and female is a double black mark against her in the field, she has found, and being firm about her title is one small way to insure she gets the respect she deserves. But this is different, she tells herself. 

“And you may call me Draco, love.”

Rose feels heat crawl up her cheeks and she wonders if her freckles are showing, the patch across her cheeks and nose that she’s cursed her father for too many times to count. 

“Yes, Story was twenty-four here. It was painted just a few weeks before our marriage.” 

Rose stares up at the painting, at the pretty brunette woman standing in a field of green, wearing a white gauzy gown that has slipped delicately off one pale shoulder. “She was lovely.”

“She was six weeks gone with Scorpius when this was taken,” Draco says, his hand still resting on Rose’s arm. “No one knew, of course. I suspect most of the world thought the match was arranged—and it was, in some respects. But not all.”

Rose looks again at the woman in the portrait, the way her cheeks are pink and her lips curve into a laughing smile, the way pieces of hair have slipped free from the messy knot at her nape and are blowing around her face in the breeze that ripples the grass she stands in. “I’ve never seen a portrait like this,” she offers, not sure what to say. 

“Oh, it was a special commission. The subject is captured in stasis, only able to enact the emotions of the day—not running about from frame-to-frame like most wizarding portraits.” 

Rose shivers and she doesn’t know why. “She’s stuck, then?”

Draco looks down at her, his eyes the colour of molten Sickles. “Not _stuck_ , Rose—she is held forever in a beautiful moment. We should all be so lucky, should we not?”

“Umm.” 

Draco nods, as if Rose has affirmed his query. “We should all be so lucky,” he repeats. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@

The case notes reveal nothing Rose doesn’t already know; she’s been over them a dozen times. She’s no closer to finding Astoria’s murderer than she was a month ago when she took the case.

“Rosie?” Harry Potter appears in the doorway of her office, and Rose smiles up at her favorite uncle. 

“Hey, Harry.”

“Still working on the Malfoy case, I see.” Harry steps into her office and peers down at her desk and the scattered paperwork strewn across it. “No leads, huh?”

“Nothing,” Rose admits. “No clues at the scene, no motives from anyone I’ve interviewed—everyone loved her.”

Harry nods. “Astoria was a wonderful woman. Gods know how Malfoy ended up with her.”

“It was sort of a love match, I guess,” Rose ventures, thinking of Draco’s words when he showed her Astoria’s portrait.

“A love match. Huh. You know the most likely suspect is Malfoy himself.”

“Of course I do,” Rose says, indignant. She knows the statistics about witch’s deaths as well as the next Auror. 

“I know you know,” Harry says, soothing her ruffled feathers. “I’m just saying—with nothing else coming up, it means you should look at Malfoy that much closer.”

Rosie nods. “I know, Harry. But . . . I don’t know. I don’t think it was him.”

“No?” Harry falls silent, tugging at the hair behind his ears the way he does when he’s thinking. “I don’t really, either, I guess—but you have to make certain before you rule him out.”

“What else should I do?” Rose says, frustrated. “We’ve turned his whole potions lab upside down—he doesn’t even have the necessary ingredients to have made the potion that killed her. We’ve searched the house. I’ve interviewed him again and again. I was there three times this week.”

Harry sighs. “I know, Rosie. I just don’t want to think this case is cold already. One more interview?” 

“Will do, boss.” Rose grins at him over her desk. “Mr. Big-Time-Head-Auror, Sir.” 

“Shut it, you.” Harry is laughing as he leaves her office. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

One more interview turns into three more, and on the fourth visit, Rose doesn’t pretend to be on Auror business. She doesn’t even wear her Auror robes. 

“You look beautiful,” Draco says when he greets her at the Manor door, terrifying the house elf who usually mans the entrance. 

Rose smiles up at him, and it’s sincere, the smile she saves for when she’s not working. She smooths her hands down the front of her cardigan, knowing the pale blue makes her eyes shine and compliments her fair skin, knowing that the open top buttons show off the spectacular cleavage that her mother insists must have come to her directly from her Grandma Weasley, since no Granger woman has ever been so lucky. “Thank you, Draco.”

He looks beautiful, too, she thinks. He’s handsome in a way that she can’t quite define. A tall, elegant, ethereal way, nothing like the men she knows who are his age—burly, rumpled men like her father or her uncle Harry. Draco is like the cat to their hounds, a sinuous lynx of a man who is no less dangerous for his beauty.

He wears his hair longer than most men she’s known, too. It falls to nearly his chin in long blond streams, and he pushes it from his forehead often. It’s lovely and so pale it’s almost white. 

“Are you here to interview me again, Rose?”

“No.”

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Rose knows that going to bed with Draco will be nothing like the other experiences she’d had, the tumbles and flings and relationships she’d had with the boy-men her own age.

And it isn’t. 

The first thing she realizes is that Draco likes to be in control. He doesn’t want to tie her up or even spank her a bit, like Teddy Lupin is rumored to do—she suspects that would be a little too gauche for him, a little too common. His domination of her is less overt. More insidious. More real. 

“Undress, Rose. Then lie down.” 

She follows his orders as if she were born to do it, and her skin burns as he watches her. His eyes are bottled smoke and they track her every moment, watching as she reveals more and more of herself. When she stands before him in nothing but a white lacy bra and a wisp of matching panties, she is aflame.

“Everything, Rose. Take them off and lie down.” Draco doesn’t raise his voice or alter his tone at all, but something tells Rose to hurry and comply, and she does. 

“You are lovely, _cher_ ,” Draco says, looking down at her as she lies naked on his huge bed. He trails a hand up her thigh, skating around the neatly trimmed thatch of curls at the vee of her legs, up the soft rises of her hips and belly. “You should be painted. Have you had your portrait done?”

“No,” Rose murmurs, feeling shy and exposed. “I’ve only ever been photographed.”

“Someday you should be painted—just like this,” Draco says, spreading her thighs just slightly, positioning her like a doll, arranging a curl of red hair to trail down over her shoulder and conceal her left breast. “Such a beauty.”

And then he’s beside her on the bed, and his hands are on her body in ways that she’s never known before, moving across her skin with a kind of devastating confidence, shaping and reshaping her breasts, sucking up a mark on her belly, cupping her chin to guide her through a kiss, holding both her wrists in one big hand while the other slides between her legs. He talks to her while he touches her, praising her beauty as if she were a sculpture. 

He likes to have her ride him best. He lies beneath her and poses her with care, arranging and rearranging her until everything is to his liking before he tells her she can move. His hands stay on her hips for the duration, and he does not hesitate to correct her movements if he finds them too fast, too slow, too careless. 

Sex with Draco is precise and intimate and oddly formal—and before he comes he thumbs her clit until she screams and shakes.

Sometimes he undresses her and makes her stand absolutely still while he whispers in her ear, telling her lurid fairy tales and perverse nothings until her cunt drips pearly liquid down her thighs and her legs tremble and when he finally touches her, just one thumb grazing her nipple, she comes so hard she sobs. 

When she has her period, he ignores her protests and fucks her against the headboard, slamming into her until they ruin the ivory silk sheets. 

He never casts a contraceptive charm, and Rose never asks for one. 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Eventually, as summer fades into autumn, Rose declares the murder of Astoria Marietta Greengrass Malfoy officially a closed case. She cannot even say that the leads have turned cold, that the evidence has not panned out, because there have been no leads, there has been no evidence. Just a beautiful corpse and a genteel widower who seems unperturbed when Rose tells him that the DMLE has, for all intents and purposes, given up any hope of finding his wife’s killer. 

Draco just nods, guiding Rose over to a chaise in the den and sitting her down before taking a seat beside her. “She will be missed, surely, by all the many, many people she touched in her life.”

Rose nods, not sure what to say. “I know she was greatly loved by many,” she says, thinking that the words sound like cold, canned comfort and wondering what you’re supposed to say to the man you’re fucking to make him feel better for the death of the woman who warmed his bed before you did.

“Yes, very many. Very, very many.” 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Rose is nervous when she tells him. They don’t talk much, not really, not beyond the filthy words Draco likes to whisper in her ear when he’s fucking her. 

It’s a Saturday morning and the light streaming into the master bedroom is clear and crisp and unforgiving. Rose keeps trying to wrap herself in the sheet, not wanting Draco to see her in such harsh sunlight. 

“Don’t hide,” he says, frowning and pulling the sheet out of her grasp. 

Rose blushes, hating the way her face heats so easily. She feels so exposed today, every ample curve, every freckle, every little blemish, from the little patch of cellulite on the backs of her thighs to the tiny mole on her left hip, on display in front of this cold and perfect man who is almost a stranger for all that he has touched her in every possible way. 

“I’m not hiding. I have to tell you something,” she says, not knowing how to begin except like this, blunt and without finesse.

Draco raises his eyebrows, and his expression is one of casual, almost careless interest. “Yes, Rose?”

“I’m going to have a baby,” she says, and as soon as the words are out she thinks they sound childish, simple, a verbal reminder that she is young enough to be this man’s daughter. 

Draco smiles at her, a little quirk of his thin lips that doesn’t register any surprise at all. “Really?” He slides one big hand over her stomach, skating up to her breasts and down again to settle on the soft curve of her lower belly. “Well, that certainly changes things, does it not?”

Rose blinks. Does it? Change things? “Er—“

Draco leans over her and plucks his wand from the bedside table, casting a quick spell over her abdomen. She’s surprised he knows it—most men don’t. The warm yellow glow that appears above her body shows that yes, she is indeed pregnant. 

“That’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Draco says, leaving the spell in stasis a moment before letting it fall. “A child—lovely.” He sets his wand aside and looks at her, his expression strangely business-like. “Have you drafted your resignation letter?”

“My what?” Rose is truly shocked. Of all the possible responses she’s imagined from Draco, this was never one of them. “I’m not going to resign from the force—”

“Of course you are,” Draco interrupts, unperturbed. “You’ll not be putting my child in danger. I won’t have it.”

“And I won’t have you dictating to me,” Rose shoots back, forgetting for a moment that Draco intimidates her. 

“Don’t be silly.” Draco pulls her up against him, arranging her body next to his in that strange way he has, as if she is a life-sized doll instead of a woman. “You’re carrying my son or daughter.” 

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

“This is Herr Pandolf. Pandolf, meet my fiancé, Rose.” As he speaks her name, Draco’s hand is warm and solid against her back, guiding her forward until she stands before him. 

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Madam. To paint you shall be an even greater one,” the little artist says, his eyes roaming over her from head to toe. 

“Herr Pandolf is the very best,” Draco says, his hands rising up to gather Rose’s unruly curls into a bun at the nape of her neck, plucking a few strands loose here and there in artful dishabille. “He painted the last Mrs. Malfoy, too, you know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [secretsalex](http://secretsalex.tumblr.com) on tumblr, and I am a sucker for comments.


End file.
